Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim invests $40 million in Shazam

Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim recently invested $40 million in music recognition service Shazam. The cash infusion will help the company with continued growth in music, aid expansion efforts into television and help make inroads into Latin American according to a statement from Shazam on the subject.

As per the partnership, Shazam will soon come pre-loaded on smartphones sold by Slim’s telecom company America Movil across Latin America. That’ll no doubt help Shazam add to the 70 million active monthly users they already enjoy. Shazam CEO Rich Riley said his company looks forward to working with America Mobil to launch new services in the region as they seek to increase their ubiquity throughout the world.

In the event that you are unfamiliar, Shazam allows a user to utilize the microphone on their smartphone to listen and analyze songs or television shows that are playing in the background. The app is then (usually) able to return information about the song / artist as well as the show in question by cross referencing what it hears against its database of more than 27 million tracks.

The service partners with affiliates like iTunes and Spotify on the music side to sell tunes and subscriptions, a business that now brings in more than $300 million annually.

Earlier this month, the company released an iPad app with an auto-tagging feature that actively listens and tags media playing in the surrounding environment.